State energy ministers meet this week to discuss the National Energy Guarantee. While the policy has been criticised as too modest, it would put us light years ahead of the previous climate policy paralysis.

India has pledged to ramp up renewable energy and make its economy more carbon-efficient. And while that will help cut emissions, the main motivation is to give power to the many who still lack access to electricity.

Tasmanian hydro power had a boom couple of years when the carbon price was in place.
CSIRO/Wikimedia CommonsJuly 20, 2015

A year after the demise of the carbon tax, we might expect both coal and greenhouse emissions to have bounced back, at the expense of renewables like hydroelectricity. Sure enough, that's what happened.